South Park recently aired it’s 200th & 201st episodes. The plots were full of classic South Park references highlighting some of the funniest – and most irreverent – situations of the show’s fourteen season history. A subplot of these episodes revisited a storyline about an appearance by The Super Best Friends, a parody super-hero group of the world’s religious icons Jesus, Buddha, Joseph Smith, Moses, and Muhammad. As it did on a previous occasion, Comedy Central censored the Muhammad character for fear of backlash from the Muslim community. While preventing the Islamic backlash, Comedy Central came under heavy fire by others defending the creator’s – and viewer’s – First Amendment rights. (Read more about the fallout here.)

I’m a season pass holder of South Park over at the iTunes Store. While Apple initially made episode 200 available to subscribers, it was ultimately pulled and episode 201 never made an appearance. This sparked a bit of outrage of my own resulting in the creation of the following review:

As a Season Pass holder of South Park for many years now, I find it highly disappointing that recent episodes “200″ and “201″ have not been made available through the iTunes store. Whether this is a decision made by Comedy Central or Apple, the unnecessary level of censorship supported by both companies is disheartening. While South Park episodes have been readily available for free (both by Comedy Central and other avenues on the Internet) I have been an ardent supported of paying for quality television. My reward for this support? Two companies deciding for me that I’m not intelligent enough to understand the satirical use of a religious figure as a cartoon character. I call on both Comedy Central and Apple to immediately release episodes “200″ and “201″ via the iTunes store or issue an immediate refund of my Season Pass payment. This is neither “uncensored” nor “complete” as promised.

(The rant is currently the highest ranked review for South Park: Season 14 on the iTunes store and has received 162/163 positive feedback! Whoa!)

Last night I received the following email from Apple:

Dear John,

Thank you for purchasing a Season Pass for South Park, Season 14. Episodes “200″ and “201″ are currently not available for download. We do not know if Comedy Central will make these episodes available at a later date.

We appreciate your understanding and have issued two free video credits to your account.

While ultimately not what I asked for it does highlight the source of the censorship to be Comedy Central. From the network which has promoted a show with a history such as South Park, the nightly social commentary of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show, and at one time allowed Dave Chappelle to dominate it’s airwaves, this is so extremely disappointing. It’s not as if the parodied character Matt Stone and Trey Parker were drawing was doing anything other than standing there and being present (as opposed to say, Buddha doing lines of cocaine)

So if Comedy Central doesn’t have the guts to show to a cartoon character of the prophet Muhammad standing around doing nothing, someone should.

This will mark Day 4 of my attempt to write this entry. It’s been almost two months since my last entry and it’s a bit challenging to get something put together. It’s time to just brain dump…

Promotion… I got a big fat one. I’ve now got a Senior title and 20 people reporting to me. (That’s up from 5!) I’ve known about it for a few months now, but actually being in the role is certainly more stressful than I anticipated. My previous role was primarily support of any services related to our Media website. These days I not only own website operations but the back end as well: Oracle DBs, ESB, leads processing, ad forecasting, payroll services, and more.

Colie is back in SF for work. She’ll be there for the better part of the year. Still adjusting. I miss that girl something fierce. The add load of the promotion isn’t helping, I think. I feel like John Adams without his Abigail. I tried talking through the day with my cat but her feedback and advice isn’t that sound.

Heading to Hawaii next week. We’ll be there for 7 days. The vacation is perfectly timed to help me with my stress. It’s going to be fun I’m sure but I’m having a pretty hard time seeing through the next day or two ahead of me at the moment.

My brother flies into town the 1st week of July. Really looking forward to having him home for a week. Yet again, something that’s hard to see through the next few days ahead of me.

So I’ve managed to get through it. Now I should stop procrastinating and get that initiative proposal and annual reviews I’ve been stalling on completed.

Woooooosah!

WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (IPS) – Contrary to Israel’s argument that it was forced to launch its air and ground offensive against Gaza in order to stop the firing of rockets into its territory, Hamas proposed in mid-December to return to the original Hamas-Israel ceasefire arrangement, according to a U.S.-based source who has been briefed on the proposal.

It appears that Israel intended to let the clock run out on the agreement. What was it Hamas was asking for?

The Hamas officials insisted that Israel not be allowed to close or reduce commercial traffic through border crossings for political purposes, as it had done during the six-month lull, according to the source. They asked Suleiman, who had served as mediator between Israel and Hamas in negotiating the original six-month Gaza ceasefire last spring, to “put pressure” on Israel to take that the ceasefire proposal seriously.

Seems rather straight forward. For those unaware, there are six (6) crossing zones in and out of Gaza. Each is designated with a special function. Historically, Israel has closed one or more of these crossings anytime it feels the need to put Hamas in a pinch. (Or at least, that is the reasoning given.) This policy has instead had a similar effect as what is being seen now: a humanitarian catastrophe.

As Israel had just as recently as November closed another of the essential crossings, it is no wonder Hamas wanted to insure the people living inside of Gaza were presented some sort of guarantee of available resource paths. Instead, Israel appears to used this as a snubbing point on attempts to reach a cease fire.

Israel’s rejection of the Hamas December proposal reflected its preference for maintaining Israel’s primary leverage over Hamas and the Palestinian population of Gaza — its ability to choke off food and goods required for the viability of its economy — even at the cost of continued Palestinian rocket attacks.

Precisely. The hope of Israel has largely been to use scenarios like this to force the Palestinian people into following new, “non-threatening” leadership. This always has the counter effect however, as has been proven time and again. The end result will be that international aide alongside the local government (in this case, Hamas) will be forced to rebuild around the aftermath of Israel’s destructive attempts. It is as failed an ideology as the neo-conservative drive to bring “liberation to the people of Iraq.”

You can not bomb people into willingness to follow you. They may however be driven to follow someone to stop you.

Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) — Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said a “once-in-a-century credit tsunami” has engulfed financial markets and conceded that his free-market ideology shunning regulation was flawed.

“Flawed?” FLAWED?! Mother fucker, step up and say you were fucking wrong.

“Yes, I found a flaw,” Greenspan said in response to grilling from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “That is precisely the reason I was shocked because I’d been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”

It was working exceptionally well until folks began to grab the big pot of money from the center of the table. Unfortunately those folks were the same pricks who were manipulating the entire system to work for them.

Greenspan said he was “partially” wrong in opposing regulation of derivatives and acknowledged that financial institutions didn’t protect shareholders and investments as well as he expected.

Isn’t it interesting that he notes the financial institutions didn’t protect shareholders and investments like he expected… What about the rest of the world, asshole? Who was supposed to be protecting the people that depended on this system to function properly without meddling fucks like yourself who were out to work the system in a manner to get the biggest pay off for your buddies?

I have absolutely zero sympathy for those who had the ability to prevent this from occurring and now stand back to say, “Sorry. I thought it was okay.” Fuck you. Seriously, go the fuck home already and rot.

What kind of asshole pulls this shit?:

In another interesting moment from his rally last night in Green Bay, John McCain brandished his newest symbol of patriotism: The dog tags of a soldier killed in Afghanistan, given to him by the soldier’s mother. “And then the note goes on to say: Please remember and support our troops in Afghanistan,” McCain said. – TPM 09.19.2008

Sure enough, the NY Times has the story backing it up.

I’ve previously said that McCain’s time as a service member and POW should be respected and off-limits from criticism. I’m afraid that needs to be retracted as McCain himself obviously has no respect for it himself. Seriously… a dog tag of a dead service member used as a political prop?

What makes John McCain worse than George Bush is that while Bush would have done some stupid shit like this, McCain was an enlisted member of the armed forces and just shit on every single ounce of credit he carried in claiming understanding of their “ultimate sacrifice”.

Senator McCain, if you saw news coverage of a Nixon in 1972 holding up your dog tag urging the country they should continue to fight in Vietnam on your behalf what would you have done? Answer: according to previous statements by McCain himself, he claims he wanted neither proponents or opponents of the Vietnam war to use his name as a propaganda tool for promoting their agendas.

Yet there you are on a stage in front of a crowd of potential voters and play it up as a a fucking propaganda tool.

This keyboard doesn’t keep up with all the profanity in my head on this God damned turtle-necked mother fucker.

What took you so long?:

July 31 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. economy may have slipped into a recession in the last three months of 2007 as consumer spending slowed more than previously estimated and the housing slump worsened, revised government figures indicated.

Got that? Revised government figures indicated. That means for the past nine months all that crap you’ve been hearing from Bush, Berneke, Paulson, and the rest of the fat cats with bulging wallets has been bullshit.

Comedy:

BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Republican John McCain pushed back Wednesday against Democratic criticism that he misstated when the troop buildup ordered by President Bush began, saying elements were put in place before Mr. Bush announced the strategy in early 2007.

He told reporters during an unscheduled stop in a supermarket that what the Bush administration calls “the surge” was actually “made up of a number of components,” some of which began before the president’s order for more troops.

This guy cracks me up.

Oh, this is worth a laugh as well:

“I am again deeply disappointed that Senator Obama will not recognize that the surge has succeeded,” Mr. McCain said. He said that “no rational person” could think otherwise.

Oh yeah? That’s weird. I could swear I read something somewhere about that…

Obama Admits Surge Worked But Still Would Not Support It – Conservative Politics Today 07.22.2008

But you know, it’s on the Internets so it’ll take McCain about 2 months to get the memo from his fellow conservative folks.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s call to “concentrate” veterans’ health care on those with combat injuries is raising questions about the Arizona senator’s commitment to funding the ailing VA system.

Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., said a system that treats combat veterans and non-combat veterans differently is inherently unfair. “We can care for both combat veterans and non-combat veterans if we just decide it is an important thing to do,” Filner said Thursday, one day after McCain talked at a Dover, N.H., town hall meeting about the need to concentrate veterans’ health care on people with injuries that “are a direct result of combat.”

“Right now, there are people who drive a long way and they stand in line to stand in line to get an appointment to get an appointment,” McCain said. – Army Times 07/23/2008

This ought to go over well… Go fight an illegal war. Come home. Go fight again cause, well, we fucked you in the contract. Suffer mentally for the Hell you’re in. Come home. Don’t get help cause they can’t see any scars on you. Riiiight. Great fuckin’ message there, John Boy.

Oh, by the way. Remember all that help that you got when you came home? Should we have had you stand at the back of the line then as well?

Just sayin…

What a tool:

Today on Good Morning America, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) refused to call the situation in Afghanistan “precarious and urgent,” but admitted that “We have a lot of work to do.” He warned of a “very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border.”

The problem is that Iraq and Pakistan don’t border each other. There’s that big country that every warhawk with an itchy trigger finger keeps complaining about… what is it… oh yeah! It’s Iran, dipshit!

I’m sure McCain’s handlers will come out and say he meant to say Afghanistan/Pakistan border. But really, when you’re talking about military conflicts in an unstable part of the world shouldn’t you get the countries straight? Isn’t this how we got into this dumb as war in the first place?

From the way-to-sidestep-reality department:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Teenage mom Jamie Lynn Spears, sister of pop star Britney Spears, showed off her new baby girl in an OK! magazine exclusive on Wednesday and said being a mother was “so much fun.”

Spears, 17, gave birth to daughter Maddie Briann on June 19 and is raising the baby with boyfriend Casey Aldridge in their Mississippi home.

“I love taking care of her. It is so much fun. I just want to hug her and kiss her, and I’m happy all the time,” she told OK!.

An excellent message to send to young teenagers, don’t you think? Having a baby at 17 is fun, exciting, and highly recommended to any young girl looking for a way to spice up her life.